At the moment kids can choose from either a burger, a crispy chicken wrap, chicken nuggets or fish fingers.

While cheeseburgers don't feature on the menus themselves, parents can still request cheese on their kids' burgers - something the US branches are now copying in a bid to make children's meals healthier by cutting calories.

Happy Meals are enduringly popular with kids

The new product coming to the UK meals comes after McDonald's asked parents on popular forum Mumsnet for ideas on ways to improve.

In a thread on the site, parents said they would like to see greater choice on the Happy Meal menu, including the potential for a non-fried option.

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Mumsnetters went behind the scenes in the McDonald’s Development Kitchen to find out more about the options being considered.

Emily Somers, vice president food and marketing at McDonald’s UK and Ireland, said: “We are constantly looking for ways to enhance our menu from introducing new items to evolving the recipes of our iconic favourites.

There will be a new addition to McDonald's Happy Meals this year

"We’ve taken big steps to improve our Happy Meal in recent years and reducing saturated fat, salt and sugar content across our menu remains a priority. This is why we’re excited to work with Mumsnet to offer even greater choice for parents and their families.”

Carrie Longton, co-founder of Mumsnet, said: “Mumsnet users tend to be pretty focused on providing healthy food and snacks for their children, so the opportunity to help McDonald's develop a new Happy Meal option was too good to pass up.”

Mumsnetters joined a team of chefs working on potential menu items for the Happy Meal including grilled chicken and vegetarian options.

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Duncan Cruttenden, director of food development at McDonald’s UK and Ireland, said: “We were delighted to host the Mumsnet team and work to the clear brief from parents.

"We want our menu options to represent what parents are looking for and what better way to do that than with parents beside us in the development kitchen.

"We are working hard to turn the many options created in the development kitchen into a successful new product for the Happy Meal, which we hope to launch later this year.”

As well as taking cheeseburgers off the advertised kids' menu in the US, McDonald's is restricting the six chicken nugget meal to kids'-sized fries. Children in the UK get the kids' fries with just four nuggets.